One of the founders of The Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, has had his passport returned to him by a Swedish Court – thereby revoking the Swedish Embassy’s previous decision to revoke his passport. The decision is a beauty to read: it’s the bureaucratic equivalent of “you’re all morons, and you should feel bad”.

The background of the story is that one of The Pirate Bay Four, Fredrik Neij aka TiAMO, has moved to the borderline between Laos and Thailand, has settled down and had children there, and he and his wife is currently expecting another. All of a sudden, the Swedish Embassy in the area thought it was a good idea to revoke his passport. Neij appealed, which was a good thing to do. In the decision (in Swedish), the court basically says that the Embassy did every single part of their job wrong, and revoked the Embassy’s decision.

The three-page decision opens in a typical bureaucratic fashion:

DECISION
The Court revokes the decision of the Embassy.

As we approach the “background” section, we get a sense that something’s not quite right here:

BACKGROUND AND POSITIONS
Neij appeals the Embassy decision and presents his case as follows: there are no valid reasons to revoke his passport. It is noteworthy that neither in the Embassy’s written decision, nor on asking specific questions, has it been declared what reasons lay behind the revocation. The case therefore presents certain difficulties for him to counter the normally-given reasons deemed legally sufficient to revoke his passport. […]

This is very, very sarcastic bureaucratic language, and we get a sense that the Court have been shaking their heads and biting their lips hard while writing it. But wait, it gets even better:

REASONS FOR THE COURT’S DECISION
[…skipping a bit…]

An elementary requirement is that authorities state their legal basis when making decisions like these. To issue a motivation that only quotes text from the law is not sufficient. It must be possible to read a decision and understand what has been the determining factor or factors in the individual case.

In its decision, the Embassy has only referred to paragraph 12, section 4 in the Passport Act, but at the same time, quoted the contents of paragraph 12, section 3 in the Passport Act. Therefore, it is possible to understand neither which legal basis nor which factual circumstances underlie the decision. Therefore, the Embassy’s decision doesn’t fulfill the basic requirements of a decision from an authority, according to paragraph 20 of the Exercising Authority Act (Förvaltningslagen). Considering this, and the additional fact that the Embassy hasn’t presented any circumstances as to why the reasons for the decision have been omitted, the decision of the Embassy shall be revoked.

This, right here, is a level-60 buffed and boosted bureaucratic bitchslap for over 9000 hitpoints.

Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. He works as Head of Privacy at the no-log VPN provider Private Internet Access; with his other 40 hours, he's developing an enterprise grade bitcoin wallet and HR system for activism.

Discussion

horace

October 7, 2012

this could not have happened to a more deserving embassy, given the only reasons the passport was revoked in the first place were:
a)because they could do it
b)because there are some completely bias people in positions of power within the Swedish Government (read here whoever you think is a two-faced arse hole working in collaboration with the USA Government and the US entertainment industries)
c)because they were asked to do so by the USA Government in retaliation for fighting against them and the US entertainment industries

just waiting for the facts to come out, as surely one day they will, as to who issued the orders to screw TPB4 for having some balls!

anonymous

October 7, 2012

Level 60 bitchslap of righteousness, more like. About time someone over there started saying “no.”

Björn Persson

October 7, 2012

Well, it’s good to see that there are some parts of the system that are actually working more or less as designed.

It would be very interesting to know if they revoked his passport with an intent to mess with Fredrik Neij specifically, or if the embassy in Bangkok is just run by incompetent dimwits who always fail to explain their decisions and Fredrik Neij was just one of the few who appealed.

mungbean

October 7, 2012

Either way it’s not looking good:

Malicious dimwits.

Dimwits.

Either way, how can this person or persons be considered worthy of their fat Swedish expat salary?

Oh wait a moment, Sweden doesn’t punish people for breaking the law does it?

Oh wait a moment, Sweden doesn’t punish people for breaking the law does it?

Only when they annoy the United States. Also, at that point it’s not really necessary to have broken a formal law.

Allan P3

October 11, 2012

Björn Persson writes; about the embassy. As from what I have seen from a Swedish televison program from the embassy (about food) I also think that there must have been a LOT of Dimwiths who only wanted to “suck as” to the US embassy (for instance) ! Speaking of revenge ! It should give people around the world a bad taste in their mouth when talking about Swedish “democracy” !
AND also explain why Assange DONT want to come to Sweden. This alleged “rape-charge” would in any other country file unde misdemeanor ! Both women AGREED to have sex with him – not once but multiple times !!! The hazzle was about a broken condom 😛 !!! What do you say ? And now the military of US, has declared Assange an ENEMY of the USA ! Someone that sees the couplings ???

mungbean

October 7, 2012

So let’s see how seriously you Swedes embrace accountability.

You have laws. They are blatantly ignored by your public servants.

A court finds them severely wanting.

Who are these people making these illegal decisions?

Who will lose their job because of it?

Let me guess: they will remain nameless, not suffer any accountability, and life will continue as before.

monkey think, monkey write

October 8, 2012

“Mistakes were made.”

Scary Devil Monastery

October 9, 2012

1974 the Swedish parliament abolished accountability for civil servants. Hence in order to punish a civil servant for malfeasance it actually has to be proven that said servant willingly broke the law.

As proving intent is usually a tough job, a swedish civil servant can get away with almost anything. If the botch job is big enough, his supervisor may “reallocate” him to another department.

There’s even an old slang term for it – “Being fired diagonally upwards” – i.e. promoted to a position where the most damage he can do is missing the count on paperclips.

And that, boys and girls, is why Sweden’s bureaucracy is riddled with self-serving incompetents with megalomaniacal tendencies.

Some nitwit at the embassy failed to refer tho the right paragraph and should have stated “it seems probable that you are trying to avoid serving your prison sentece”. If so, the court most probably wouldn’t have revoked the descision.

I think we can expect the descision to be remade, this time with the right formailities in order, I’m afraid.

Scary Devil Monastery

October 9, 2012

I’m somehow dubious. Although the court does point out the technicalities, their initial stance is admirably summarized in their initiating paragraph: That there is, in fact, no legal reason to revoke his passport.

Revoking someone’s passport, to my understanding, can only be done if someone has committed a serious crime.

Neij has been sentenced in a civil case, is demonstrably not a violent person, and has not been implicated in any criminal offenses. If you can revoke his passport then you can do the same for anyone implicated in petty theft or littering as well.

Indeed, the embassy has been more than incompetent – they have assumed authority which should by rights be backed by a court, judge and jury. The only way out is if the revocation of the passport is due to direct orders by a minister. And even then the legality is questionable.

Not that certain of our current ministers care very much for the law.

Shona Duncan

October 8, 2012

Swedish police, presecution and diplomats are so far off the dial I have to wonder where they are getting their instructions. The United States also got NZ police into trouble for arresting Kim DotCom and stealing his MegaCash (the case continues). The United States also got the Australian Prime Minister into trouble by calling Julian Assange a criminal (civil case has begun). The United States has got the British police and diplomatic corps into trouble over the violations of the Equadorian Embassy in London. So, who else is willing to break the law for the United States? And why? Former CIA asset has said that the United States threatens to bomb and trade sanction non-compliant countries into the stone age, notibly Iraq. Though there doesn’t seem to be any direct link between Sweden and the USA in this particular blunder, I am confident there is a link, only because the pattern is somewhat familiar.

horace

October 9, 2012

such a shame that the court didn’t demand the name of the person that decided to commit this disgraceful abuse of power to revoke the passport in the first place. i suppose they had the authority to do so but probably not the balls!! i mean, it would have upset the USA to have been named and the person that is in the Swedish Government but the employ of the USA as well! at least Swedes would have known who is running their country and the lengths they will go to and also who hasn’t got the guts or decency to stand up for their own people!!

And the people deciding to revoke his pasport did not read the 60-page ‘bitchslap’.
And I am willing to bet that they are going to revoke his passport again. And why not? The are just doing as they are being told, and it takes TiAMO ~3+ months to appeal in court.

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